ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the roots of English unease and in some cases downright hostility towards the Human Rights Act (HRA), and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which it partially incorporates into UK legislation, is to be found in the sharp, even intemperate. It presents recent past with some remarks on the drafting process for the ECHR in 1949-50, and the reasons why the ECHR is, as the UK desired, a much more limited document than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The chapter turns to A. V. Dicey's remarks on the Declaration and indeed all written constitutions especially those containing declarations or definitions of rights: his targets were the French and Belgian Constitutions of his time. The American philosopher Hugo Adam Bedau asked why Bentham described the Declaration as containing "anarchical fallacies". The contemporary debate about HRA repeal frames supposedly British traditions.
